


Library Magic

by Redisaid



Series: One Room [2]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Drabble, F/F, Fluff, Introspection, Political Marraige, Sometimes Sylvanas has to think real hard about how to be affectionate, Two Rooms Universe, and that's valid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 04:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redisaid/pseuds/Redisaid
Summary: Just a Two Rooms drabble that I can't get out of my head. Takes place between the end of the main story, but before the epilogue.Sylvanas is having a hard time understanding where she and Jaina stand...





	Library Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Two Rooms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15847206) by [Redisaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redisaid/pseuds/Redisaid). 

"Come sit with me."

Sylvanas Windrunner, Queen of New Lordaeron, former Warchief of the Horde, former Ranger General of Quel'thalas, a creature for whom time and death bent their ultimatums regularly, didn't know that a mere phrase had the power to simply stop her. To stop her quiet steps, to stop a racing mind, to just...stop.

But that one could, and it did.

Jaina looked up at her expectantly, nodding toward the empty part of the couch next to her. A couch in the new library of the keep. Their keep. A place only Jaina would frequent this late at night, but it had proven difficult to get her to leave this room ever since it had been completed. Whereas the war room was Sylvanas' domain, she had made it clear that this place was hers--in book stands and a note-littered desk, and a plush couch that was far too comfortable for a library. The looming shelves of books, the tangle of scroll racks--to Sylvanas, cozy was a word that she might apply. It felt like a forest, almost, but perhaps one she wasn't allowed in, one whose predators were too large and too dangerous for her to deal with just yet. 

But like all forbidden things, the temptation of their very existence was enough to draw even the most righteous in, and to break the most ardent of promises.

Perhaps that was what felt so strange about being invited.

"You're not finished then?" Sylvanas asked, eyeing the empty part of the couch, but making no move to fill it.

"One more chapter, I promise. I have a meeting with the delegation in the morning, and I just want to be prepared," Jaina told her. 

Sylvanas glanced at the cover of her book. Ah, a tome about the Dusk Lily rebellion. Right, Thalyssra was due to arrive in the morning for talks.

"I've wondered why you insist on reading here," Sylvanas deflected, giving voice instead to that concern.

"It's comfortable," Jaina informed her. "I prefer the magelights here to read by, more consistent than candle light or oil lamps. It's quiet at night, but not lonely. I can still hear people walking by, guards and the like. Are you asking if there's some reason I prefer it to our room?"

Yes. "No."

"Will you please sit? You know it drives me crazy when you do that," Jaina sighed, marking her place in the book, then setting it aside to point more directly to the couch.

"Do what?" Sylvanas asked as she took stock of herself. Right, standing tall at parade rest. At least she wasn't pacing. Jaina hated pacing. She didn't wait for Jaina's response, and just sat as asked.

"Thank you," Jaina sighed again, though this time with a note of ease. "And for the record, I'm not trying to get away. You should know that. I still read in bed too."

"I know," the quietness of her own voice was surprising. The softness too. As if the fine upholstery and the shelves upon shelves of bound paper absorbed it. As if they tempered the edges of it, a dagger reduced to a mere letter-opener.

"Good," Jaina said as she picked her book up again.

What followed was a series of movements that Sylvanas didn't understand at first. A flourish of skirts brushing her legs as Jaina untangled herself from them. Then a warm shoulder grazing her own, before a body leaned into her, cloth on leather, warmth on cold, inert and unmoving flesh. Strands of white hair, escaping their braid prison, falling against her elbow, just barely tickling at skin that had just enough sensation left to it to notice their intrusion.

Jaina was leaning on her. Leaning on her and reading.

"What are you doing?" Sylvanas asked.

"Being with you," Jaina answered. 

They were still figuring this out. Most nights, Jaina slept in her bed now. Some nights, Sylvanas would lay with her. Most days, they would share at least one kiss then, at night, in their rooms. Some days, they would share more.

But always there. Never anywhere else. Not yet, at least. No, it didn't seem right. Only Alleria had seen them like that together, and that was causing Sylvanas enough problems. 

This was all still very new. Very tenuous. Very fragile. 

But Jaina didn't seem to think so as she squirmed her way deeper into the right angle that Sylvanas' back made with the couch. "That's why you came here tonight, isn't it? You wanted me to come back to our room."

'Our room'. Just the one. Was it official then? Well, it was now.

As for an answer, well, that was even more difficult to digest. "It's just that you usually are there by now."

"Were you worried about me?" Jaina asked as she settled her head against Sylvanas' shoulder. A shoulder uncovered by armor today, now, and more so recently.

Jaina's breath was soft and even against her. Steady. Her eyes were still fixed on the pages she held just beneath them. Too close, actually. Was her vision poor? Or was that normal for a human, with their books of blocky Common letters and thick, crude bindings?

"You don't have to answer," Jaina said after a moment.

"You didn't give me enough time," Sylvanas told her.

"That tells me it was a yes then," Jaina said, a smile curving her lips, only the corner of which Sylvanas could see.

“Why are you doing this?” Sylvanas asked. 

“What’s this?” Jaina asked in return, unphased, still smiling.

Sylvanas had worried that this marriage of theirs would be a battle. An unending power struggle that she would have to submit herself to each and every day. It had started off that way, then become a calmer, easier thing. And now, now it was picking up again into something that she didn’t quite know how to handle. Well, that wasn’t true. She did know. She just had to let herself remember. 

Needless to say, Jaina seemed to take some joy in being difficult, in pushing her and pulling words from her mouth that she had thought herself beyond saying. Words that were a thing of Sylvanas Windrunner maybe twenty or thirty years ago. Before the wars. Before her death. Words that belonged to warm evenings in Silvermoon, charm slipped into long elven ears, promises that had no meaning behind them, or at least not much past that night. 

Perhaps that, and not the fact that she was undead, made it so much harder to find them now. Perhaps because it wasn’t just flirting. Perhaps because Jaina clearly wanted more.

Sylvanas moved, finally. She lifted the arm that Jaina was resting against, gently, and slid it behind her back. Her hand came to rest on Jaina’s hip. It fit nicely there. 

What an odd thought. 

“This,” she responded. 

“You have no problem with it in bed. Don’t think I’m too asleep to notice the way you touch me, or how you like to fix my hair,” Jaina noted as she relaxed into Sylvanas’ arm.

“It usually needs fixing,” Sylvanas explained.

“It gets humid here, always did,” Jaina said as she adjusted herself yet again.

Wait, was that? No. Maybe. Jaina slid further down against the riding leathers she wore now, black and silver, and rubbed her cheek against Sylvanas’ chest.

“I believe we’re having casual conversation again,” Sylvanas said.

She found herself looking at her own hand, foreign to her in simple black, fingerless gloves. A dark contrast to Jaina’s white skirts. Alien amidst their silk and the dark gold thread of their embroidery. She couldn’t help but trace the lines it made, to run her finger along, counting stitches, then glancing at Jaina’s hidden smile for reaction. 

“I like our casual conversation, Sylvanas. I had hoped you would understand that by now,” Jaina told her. 

“I know it well,” she replied, fingers still chasing the seams. “But I don’t understand it. Why you want me here, touching you. Why I go looking for you.”

It was Jaina’s turn to take her time now. Sylvanas watched her go to turn a page, but pause. One of her delicate fingers, nimble and deft from decades of spellweaving, held the corner of the page in place--not folding it, but flexing the paper, bending it just until it curved.

“You seem to think you don’t deserve any kind of tenderness,” Jaina finally answered, letting the book go as she turned to look up at Sylvanas. “But yet you give it to me in spades. I know you now, Sylvanas. We’ve spent too much time together. I know you don’t mind me laying on you.”

She didn’t. But even now, weeks after they’d shared their first night together, after Jaina had given her back her sisters, albeit in a way that none of them truly wanted, she had a hard time accepting it. She had a hard time understanding that she was wanted. That this, whatever this was, was wanted.

“But here?” was Sylvanas’ only objection.

“What’s different about here? The library? You think that people don’t see they way you hold doors open for me now, how you linger near me when you would have made any excuse to be on the other side of the room? It’s all right, you know, to feel that way. To let that be seen. I don’t mind,” Jaina told her. 

A warm hand snaked up to cup her cheek, making sure Sylvanas’ gaze didn’t escape hers.

“I’m not the type of person whose public image oozes tenderness, Jaina,” Sylvanas said, letting the last word roll slowly from her tongue. She liked saying it. She’d grown fond of it. 

“That doesn’t change what you feel, though. And don’t try to give me any bullshit about not feeling anything,” Jaina warned, giving her cheek a slight pinch as she smiled again.

“You know too many of my secrets now,” Sylvanas said, voice even lower somehow, just above a whisper. So low that it’s overtone almost didn’t join in. Nearly natural. Nearly like something it once was.

“Good thing we’re married, then,” Jaina noted. 

Sylvanas looked down at her, feeling the odd pensiveness that this room gave her lifting. Instead, it was replaced by the way Jaina’s smile made her feel. A tired smile, with crows feet to match at the corner of her eyes. A heavy weight that settled with it, but a lightness too. But of all things, a growing familiarity. A smile that was becoming a regular thing, no longer an exotic beast to be hunted with bad puns and unexpected jokes. A smile that she could get even when she was having a hard time being honest with those feelings of hers. 

Of all of Jaina’s magics, she had decided that this was the most powerful one.

“Yes, it’s a good thing,” Sylvanas agreed as she leaned down to kiss her wife.


End file.
